


The End of All Things

by tersa (alix)



Series: Dragon Age:Present Imperfect [8]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Awakening, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Rare Pairing, The Calling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alix/pseuds/tersa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Calling comes for every Grey Warden that doesn't die sooner, and it's Nathaniel Howe's time.</p><p>(Should be read after 'Present Past Imperfect: Epilogue v2')</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LiveJournal in May 2011.

_Vigil’s Keep, Ferelden. 9:60_

It was there all the time, on the edges of his consciousness, a song, a symphony, like the distant strains from a welcoming tavern in a dark, rainy night or the teasing remembrance of a tune heard long ago. In its melody was a joy, in its harmony longing, the whole beckoning him home.

She’d sensed him slipping away for some time. Years of sharing a bed, and she clung to him like a new lover as she slept, raven hair now silvery grey, face lined with age—no, wisdom—pillowed on his shoulder, arm around his waist as if he might slip from her in the night without farewell. And perhaps he might have, if the call was stronger, if the days were later.

She woke and kissed him, gently at first, then with growing passion, a kiss he returned from habit, but the allure of the song was stronger, and while she touched him with desperation, he felt it as if removed, taking no pleasure in it. Only regret.

Ceasing her attentions, she lay draped across his chest, studying his face with hurt and dismay. Nathaniel lifted a hand to caress her cheek with the back of his fingers, a gesture of old affection that she leaned into, eyes fluttering closed.

“It’s time, Marian.”

Her throat worked. She swallowed hard. The muscles of her face trembled, her voice hoarse when she asked, “When?”

“Today. I can’t deny it anymore. I don’t want to.”

A tear spilled down her face, wetting his fingers. She nodded. “Very well.”

He stood before the Keep, ranks of Grey Wardens in formation before him. He’d trained all of them. He was the last of his time. Kallian gone, happy, he thought, to at last join Alistair. Sigrun, Oghren. Anders…Anders. He felt a stab of pain. He hadn’t thought of Anders in a long time, dead decades before at Marian’s hand. He’d avoided this choice, by making a different one. How strange the world worked.

The Commander of the Grey stood beside him on the step and said the ritual words, the Wardens replied. Nathaniel didn’t hear. Marian wasn’t with them.

Thomas turned to him and offered his hand. He was trying to keep a stoic face, but Nathaniel knew his nephew too well, watched him grow from a little boy to a man who would not be dissuaded from following in his uncle’s footsteps, and now had to say good-bye, just as he would to many who would follow, until he himself was called. He would be a good Warden-Commander.

Where was she?

They went down, down into the bowels of the Keep, to the dwarven crafted doors of the Deep Roads. He accepted the rucksack of food, the waterskin, an extra quiver. But it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t last long, as an archer, against the hordes. Until the arrows ran out, and maybe a short time beyond.

A clink of metal from behind them, and he turned, stared. Marian walked towards him as if out of the past, armor glinting silver and red, instead of blue, in the lantern light. Dissonance at the image, until he realized he expected the hilt of the wickedly long claymore she’d once favored instead of the sword and shield she carried now. A backpack slung over her shoulders and a waterskin at her waist announced her ready for travel.

“What are you doing?” Emotion roughened his voice to a growl.

“Going with you.”

“You can’t,” he protested. “It’s not your time.”

“Who’s to say it isn’t?” she asked, leveling him a cool look with her blue eyes. The color had faded as she’d grown older, but some of the old intensity was in her glare.

He looked to Thomas for support, and instead got a shrug. He turned back to her and said, “I have never done this before, but I am ordering you not to.”

“You’re not the Commander of the Grey anymore,” she pointed out with a sniff, and a flash of a thin smile. “Besides, I told you once I have issues with authority.” Before he could protest further, she stepped forward and put her gloved hands to his cheeks, proclaiming herself in words she hadn’t used for twenty years, “I am the former Champion of Kirkwall. I will go out on my terms: not the Chantry’s, not the Grey Wardens’, and not by the beck and call of some big damn lizard sleeping off the biggest bender in all of history. I’ve slain dragons. I’m fully prepared to slay some more.” Dropping her voice to an intimate level, she murmured for his ears alone, “I’ve already had to walk away from losing one man I love in my lifetime. I’m not doing it again.”

Emotion pierced his numb cocoon. He leaned into her hands. “I love you.”

Her smile was brilliant. “I know.”

The doors opened, and they stepped forward to meet their fate as they always had. Head-on. Together.


End file.
